As is tradition with the Mortal Kombat movies, this one, like all predecessors, will have a terrible plot and execution but the fatalities will be glorious. And after viewing, this was precisely the case. I understand now why Warner Bros released the first 7 minutes on YouTube. That opening scene is the best fight of the entire movie.
Let me list the good in the movie before explaining the bad. The good parts are:
- Fatalities: gruesome and what fans of the games wanted to see.
- Character quips: in-line with the games, and well deserving of the characters.
- Special effects: the budget clearly was spent mostly on this and it shows.
- Camerawork: easy to follow along with the action and clear focus.
- Costumes: great job at adapting the video game characters into real life.
- Game References: fans will catch many of these and put a smile on their faces.
To address plot, which one doesn’t come to see with a Mortal Kombat movie, it is an incredible shame that this film decided to, once again, make it a set-up and prequel to the tournament. You can’t and shouldn’t call this movie Mortal Kombat if there’s no tournament. I would have called it something like “The Defenders of Earthrealm: Mortal Kombat Stories”. That makes better sense and helps diminish the disappointment when someone watches this movie expecting to finally see the tournament, for once.
What we got was a poor man’s attempt to put a coherent story for this franchise. Which is doubly shameful because the video games, especially the most recent MK11, have an actually decent plot. In fact, you’d be better off watching all the cutscenes of that on YouTube and you’d have seen a better told story. This film starts with a great scene between Hanzo Hasashi versus Sub-Zero and then jumps to a piss-poor MMA fight scene with our new protagonist Cole Young played by Lewis Tan. The actor here did a great job with what he had to work with. His martial arts background was clearly displayed, and it helped with the camerawork because there were no rapid cuts between stuntman and actor. Anyways, the story quickly develops into Cole on the run from Outworld assassins and on a journey to Lord Raiden’s temple. And then it simply stays there.
Enough on the plot, let’s talk about the fights. Some were enjoyable, others were a bore. Some were CGI fests and required even more suspension of reality – Goro would have killed his opponent with one punch, or the many that he threw in the barn would have ended them. I actually found myself reading stuff on my phone several times because the fights were merely fluff on the way to the fatalities.
Overall, it’s a fun watch for fans of the game. Kano is hilarious at quipping, and often references the game. The characters are worthy of their in-game counterparts. And as often stated, the fatalities are worth the price of admission. I didn’t talk much about the actors/actresses or the screenwriters because this is Mortal Kombat, and all people want to see is gruesome death and combat. Acting skills are of little importance as much of the movie is stunt work. This isn’t a movie you take to pad your resume, but rather because you wanted to have some fun. However, for the screenwriters, this is the opposite. This will not pad your resume in the slightest because the writing was banal and atrocious. Inserting game quips is not a testament to your skill. Lines such as: “How’d you get that?” – “He was born with it.” – “What do you mean?” – “It’s a birthmark.” This will forever cement one as a terrible screenwriter.
Mortal Kombat is available now on most streaming services and in theaters.
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